Within NASA there has been resentment of SpaceX because its rise came as the space shuttle program was being ended. Indeed, with the shuttle’s end, NASA is counting on Dragon’s capacity to safely bring back thousands of pounds of cargo from orbit. In that sense, it’s a replacement of sorts.

“This is absolutely critical to space station. We really need this capability,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, head of human spaceflight for NASA, of Dragon.

But today a lot of that lingering resentment seems to be going, or gone.

“From a program perspective we couldn’t be more pleased,” said Mike Suffredini, the space station program manager.

SpaceX is an American company. It could eventually provide the answer to the big problem with U.S. spaceflight right now: We rely on the Russians to fly astronauts. These are all good reasons to root for the company.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in 2010. (NASA)

But here’s the big one: Money. SpaceX has received $381 million from NASA to develop the capability — its rocket and spacecraft — to fly cargo to the space station. All told the company has spent about $1 billion, said its CEO, Elon Musk.

And how much would NASA have spent developing a rocket and spacecraft to do the same thing?

According to Alan Lindenmoyer, commercial crew and cargo manager for NASA, a recent federal analysis estimated that using traditional NASA procurement to spacecraft design and construction, developing a similar capacity would have cost four to 10 times as much.

Folks, if we’re going to get people beyond low-Earth orbit, the cost of getting stuff to orbit has got to come down.